THE ill-fated Opera Centre site, assembled in 2006-08 for a reported €110 million, and now cited as one of the great excesses of the Celtic Tiger years, was this week, officially placed on the market for a knockdown €12.5 million. Some of the owners of property in the Patrick Street/Rutland Street area at the time the package was put together by Rooney Auctioneers, walked away with sums in the region of €3 million each in their back pockets.
The 3.2 acre development site, now an eyesore in the heart of the city and with its future uncertain, has been put up for sale with Dublin estate agents Savills, who have launched a campaign in search of a buyer.
As exclusively reported in the Limerick Post recently, speculation continues to grow that local developer Michael Tiernan, who put the Arthur’s Quay Shopping Centre into place, could be a likely bidder.
Mr Tiernan is brother-in-law of accountant Gerry Boland, Monaleen, who has strong links with multi-millionaire JP McManus, who recently donated a sum of money to improve the facade of the Opera Centre site.
Said Pat Kearney of Rooneys: “Michael Tiernan is the perfect candidate-he is a man who gets things done…let’s hope that the speculation linking his name to the site comes to fruition”.
Limerick City Council had granted planning permission for a multi-storey shopping centre with 38,541 sq.m of retail space, and an underground car park.
The entire project was put at €300,000 million.
The sale of the controversial site has been called by developers Terry Sweeney, David Courtney and Jerry O’Reilly of Regeneration Developments, whose loans have been transferred to Nama.
Indian-born developer, Suneil Sharama, who with investor Sam Morrison, was the brainchild behind the Opera Centre- they later sold on the site- was recently granted permission by the Danish Bank NIB to take control of the partially built Parkway Valley, on the Dublin Road.
Members of Limerick City Council, including Mayor Jim Long, have expressed serious concerns that should the Parkway Valley development proceed, that it will further damage the city centre, which continues to see a decline in footfall.
